So much for my relaxing little vacation.

London was fine and dandy, the trip down was seamless and fun, the visit to the car lot in Stratford was mostly fruitless, but not unenjoyable, and the trip back was even alright, until we hit Sudbury. Then it got interesting.

The charging system warning light came on as we were approaching the bypass. The light is the one that looks like a battery. Now when this light comes on, it means that there is something wrong with your car’s electrical system; either the battery is dying, the alternator’s output is below or above the normal range, or there is a fault somewhere in the system, like a bad ground connection. In any case, if you continue driving like that, all sorts of bad things could happen, from the car just quitting, to frying all the electronics on board, so you really can’t afford to take any chances.

It was only 7 o’clock, so we pulled in to the local Canadian Tire, hoping that they could get a look at it right away. This was, apparently, a foolish notion. Best they could do was the next day, and at first, this seemed unacceptable. We had places to go and it wasn’t dark yet. I concluded that if it was either the battery or the alternator, and if they had one in stock, I could just change them out myself in the parking lot, so we went in again to see about getting a volt-meter to diagnose the problem.

After poking around a little, it turned out that the battery was just fine, which is good, because Miatas have a very special, unique, and expensive battery not used in any other car, and so likely not in stock anywhere. It has a different chemical inside because of its location (the trunk) and is extra small and light, like everything else on the car. Though it would have been the easiest to change, I could have substituted a different one temporarily, and even if dead, the car would continue to run from the power provided by the alternator; we could just drive it home and deal with it later.

Checking the alternator revealed the problem; it was only putting out 12.1 volts. That would explain the funny smell on the way into town. Here I just thought it was the smell of Sudbury. A car’s electrical system runs from both the battery, nominally 12.6 volts, and the alternator, usually putting out about 14. Most cars, especially older ones, will continue to run until they’re at about 8 or 9 volts, but lights will be dim, accessories will be sluggish or non-functional, and the vehicle may run poorly, especially if newer. In my case, the altenator didn’t even have enough juice to keep the battery charged (anything under 12.5 volts is unlikely to start the car), and would probably not be enough to keep all the lights on, or operate wiper or blower motors. It was getting dark, and we were back in the North, so it was cooler and would be a little unpleasant without heat. Really, not having enough juice to power the lights was the big issue. I’d also noticed that the car was beginning to idle strangely, so continuing didn’t seem like a good idea.

Looking under the hood, the alternator is actually fairly easy to access and change, and I was prepared to just change it in the parking lot. I was at a Canadian Tire after all, I could just pop in and buy whatever tools I needed to do the job. Being a summer car, there were no rusty bolts to worry about, and I didn’t particularly care about getting dirty. However, it was irrelevant since they didn’t have one in stock, nor did anyone else in town that was still open, nor, as it turns out, did anyone else that wasn’t open. I found that odd, since Mazda uses similar versions of that 1.8 litre mill in other cars, and due to the economy of scale, would likely share as many parts with other cars as possible. As it turns out, after having asked around at my friendly, local junkyard when I got back, that alternator is only used in the Miata, and only in 1999-2000 model years. Similar is not identical, I guess.

So I called home. I was beginning to despair and feel panicky. I didn’t want to pause my trip here. I wanted to spend all of Tuesday relaxing at home, not continuing to drive. I told my parents of our situation and tried to figure out what to do. I determined that we should just get a motel and make an attempt to locate the part tomorrow, or failnig that, rent a tow dolly the next day and have them tow us back. There was a nice eatery close by and I could see several motels from where we stood in the parking lot. I also knew of a nice place near where I used to live in Lively. There was even a liquor store in this plaza. I’d planned to make the best of things; I could get some booze, have a bite to eat, get a room, get wasted and fornicate with my lovely wife in a place that was vaguely familiar at least. But this is Sudbury, quite possibly one of the most hostile places I’ve ever been.

To recap, since I left in 1986 or 87, I’ve never really had a good experience being back, or doing anything there. Meghan had a job interview with Rainbow District School Board one time, and we briefly considered moving there. We found only one place remotely suitable, and we got turned down from renting it. We had a flawless record with landlords and good job prospects, and we were turned down. By someone from Blind River no less, who knew me at least by reputation. Maybe that was why. Fucking cunt. While we were there, we had huge issues with Bell gouging us for using credit cards to make phone calls from pay phones rather than burning a zillion minutes on the cell phone. We were camping while househunting to keep costs down because the cheapest motels were 75$ a night, and they were all full. While camping, we had our tent stolen. Yes, fucking stolen. So we had to sleep in the car on the last night (which, with the back seat folded down and our feet in the trunk, was surprisingly comfy). The brakes on the car also decided to fail that trip, and it was by sheer luck that a Midas was able to fix it same-day. Any of the times we’ve stopped there to eat while passing though have been half-assed at best. We once went there to test drive a car (a Subaru WRX), and while on the test drive, the salesman called the police because we’d been gone too long in his estimation. Asshat.

Suffice to say, my plan epic failed. There were literally no vacancies in the entire city. None. I called every place in the book, and none of them had a room for the night, or just weren’t answering (probably for that reason). As it turns out, Sudbury is always full to the brim with out-of-town contractors. They’re a very progressive city, always building, building, building. They’re also working on extending Highway 400 all the way to Sudbury, which is a huge project. It’s really no surprise that every motel and hotel is booked solid. So, we needed a new plan, since sleeping in the car in the parking lot was not an option. We called my parents back, and asked if they would come get us. Sudbury is probably at the edge of the range where that is at all practical. They agreed to get us, and left immediately. We went to Buzzy Brown’s and had a bite to eat while we waited. I had a tasty, if oddball burger and possibly some of the worst coffee in history. We then waited the rest out at the Tim Hortons. That was a creepy enough experience; the parking lot was full of hooligans and loitering locals, pretty clearly up to no good. It made me start to fear for the safety of leaving the car here overnight, not to mention us sitting there for four hours.

Long story short we made it home, but I was pretty tired by the time that happened. It was after 4am by the time I was in bed. Good thing I took that extra day off to recover. I planned to spend it hunting down a part, driving to Sudbury, putting it in and driving back. That wasn’t in the stars either. Nobody had one, and we were not going to leave the car overnight again. We tried a convoluted plan of having the Mazda dealer in Sudbury cut a key from the VIN and bring it to their shop so they could just fix it, but by the time I found out this plan didn’t work, it was getting late in the day again. Meghan located a cheap tow dolly rental, and Dad and I hit the road at about 3 or 4. It was going to be another late night.

We made it there at around sundown, only to discover that the dolly’s straps were too big to fit the Miata’s tiny wheels. We clamped them down as best we could, and augmented that with some locking tiedown straps bought from the conveniently located Canadian Tire. ‘Good enough’ would have to do. We got in at about 2am, and again, I wasn’t in bed until about 4, so this morning I called in to work to say I wasn’t going to be there. I am still really burnt out from the road; it’s a safety issue. I could easily kill/injure myself or others at work if my mind isn’t on track. That’s not a chance I want to take.

My boss was pretty pissed off. I won’t be fired over this, I don’t think, but there’ll be hell to pay. My best bet is to go in tomorrow, nice and early, and give it my best. When he talks to me about it, I just have to try my best to explain, to make him see things from my perspective. Would he have left his 1970 Chevelle SS (the car of his dreams, the one he’s owned since he was 17) there overnight again, at the mercy of the hooligans of an unfriendly city? I hope he sees reason. To him it’s just a Miata, but to my dad, and to myself, the car represents a family project, a focus for bonding. It’s just a used Miata, far from perfect, but to us it’s special, and if he doesn’t understand that, then too damned bad.

On a positive note, Opeth rocked hard, and I snapped some lovely pics of the Grey county wind farm on the way by. Maybe I’ll even get the ambition to post some. Hahaha.

Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can, Home Sweet Home, Music, Work at 1:56 PM UTC

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It’s been many moons since I’ve posted here, after what could be generously described as a brief spurt. Being called back to work tends to have that effect, such that with so much less free time, I only post if I’m bored.

Clearly, now is one of those times.

I don’t even have a lot to say that is of any real interest, so as usual, I will fill this space with inane details from my mundane existence.

I’m steadily losing interest in yet another career path. I still like cars, and my co-workers (mostly), but I’m starting to think I don’t have what it takes. Maybe someday I’ll find a career that agrees with me.

I’m going to see Opeth, one of my favourite bands, in about a week. The show is in London, ON, at Centennial Hall on the 21st. I’m pretty pumped about that. It will be my first time back in London since I moved away in December 2006.

Speaking of which, I’m in the process of looking at moving again. Locally this time. We’re considering going in with my Mother-in-law and getting a really giant old house. You know, the kind with all the old trim left. They just don’t make them like they used to. There are a few possibilities, but nothing sure just yet.

I’d like to find a winter beater so I can retire my SVX to summer-only duty. I also want to replace Meghan’s car with something newer and more reliable than a 17-year-old semi-exotic that was temperamental even when new. She’s a little bitter about it. Go figure.

I’m looking at used Mazda Protege5 or Chrysler PT Turbo as options, mostly because I can’t afford another Subaru that isn’t a base model, and Subarus don’t hold my interest unless there’s a turbo involved. Though I also found a used Mazda RX-8 for cheap… but then I’d need TWO winter beaters.

One of my housemates blew up his computer, so after frying my old system with his faulty power supply, we’re replacing it all with the guts from my current system, and I get an upgrade. I’m going from an Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz, high efficiency) on a flaky ASUS AMD 690G-based board to an Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz, high efficiency) on what is supposed to be a very reliable and versatile Gigabyte AMD 780G-based board. I wanted one of the 790G-based boards, as they have better graphics, but the only micro-ATX board that I could find (DFI Lanparty) costs way too much.

Anyway, what makes even this new Gigabyte board so much better than my old one is that the onboard video is actually good enough to game with, thanks in part to 128MB dedicated GDDR3 onboard memory and a modern, if low-end GPU (ATi HD3200-based). As long as your taste in games is sedate or old (which is the case), the board packs enough punch that you don’t need a power-hungry add-in card. That helps keep temps down, which is key in a low-noise HTPC like mine. An additional upshot is that it will do what they call “Hybrid Crossfire” wherein you can link the onboard GPU to an add-in card and boost performance further. It still won’t be amazing, but then, I don’t play games like Crysis, so I don’t care at all. Basically, it will run everything I play now, or have played, and will continue to play for the forseeable future. As long as I can run Diablo 3 when it comes out, I’ll be happy with it.

I got some higher-end DDR2-1066 memory for this board, which with the CPU I have is overkill (it only supports up to DDR2-800), but if I decide to upgrade in the future to a Phenom-based chip, this setup can handle it. If I had the budget, I would have bought a Phenom 9350e (quad core, 2.0GHz, high efficiency), but by the time I upgrade, perhaps there will be more AM2+ compatible, high efficieny Phenoms to choose from. As of right now, the 9350e is the ONLY one, and at 65W TDP, it’s still more thirsty than either of the chips I have now, and costs twice as much.

I’ve been filling the rest of my time with RPGs, as usual. I’ve been running a Shadowrun campaign for about 9 months now, and I think that’s about to draw to a close before the year is up. I’m getting tired of running it and need a break.

So, after that, one of our group is going to run a 4th Edition game for us. I don’t have high hopes for it. The game might play just fine, and in fact, I’m sure it will, but I will never switch over to it. The terms of the new “GSL” or Game System License are ridiculously draconian, especially compared to the “OGL” or Open Gaming License that 3rd edition was published under. The OGL is like the RPG equivalent of the Open Source software movement, and like any other fiscally responsible, socially retarded company, Wizards of the Coast, under the iron fist of its master, Hasborg, is doing everything they can to close that little Pandora’s Box.

There are no solid plans beyond that. Meghan might run one of her games again. Or I might start a new D&D game. I’m leaning toward using a D&D 3.5-based system called Pathfinder, published under the OGL by Paizo (former publishers of Dungeon, and Dragon magazines). Basically it fixes a bunch of stuff that was wrong with 3.5, and despite the terrible artwork, it has great promise.

Bad art in the books has been an ongoing complaint of mine ever since WotC bought the rights to D&D and re-published the 2nd edition back in 1996. Not that all the chainmail bikini babes and Conan-ish warriors made better subject material than anthropomorphic creatures (whose females all have big tits and silly armour anyway), but the quality of how they were rendered has suffered. It used to be gritty, or glossy, but recognisably fantasy. Now everything looks like either anime or a comic book, and I hate it. Whatever it takes to sell books, I guess.

The only other thing I’ve been up to is expanding my music folder on my computer. I’ve been hunting down material from bands that I meant to catch up on 10 years ago. Some have been like revelations, while others have been an utter waste of bandwidth. That might make an interesting post all on its own…

Posted by Ron as Computers, Fire-in-a-can, Games, Home Sweet Home, Music, Work at 2:04 PM UTC

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I heard about Failure quite a while ago, I even had one of their songs (a cover) on my computer long, long before I realised just how incredible they are as a band. They contributed a cover of “Enjoy the Silence” to a Depeche Mode tribute album, which my sister bought and ripped, which I then copied. It was a good cover; so good that even Depeche Mode like it better than their own version. I tried searching for some of their other stuff, but could find nothing, and gave up on it.

Fast forward several years, sometime after I discovered the Minibosses. At one point, they had a live cover of a song called “Golden” available for download from their website. I grabbed it because I was grabbing everything  they had up on the site, and there were few details available on the individual tracks. It was a neat song, but I had no idea who was responsible for the original. I tried searching for individual lyrics (I’ve had good success with that in the past), but came up empty. For all I knew, it was a Minibosses original in a more conventional alt-rock style. It’s live, and the ‘bosses were drunk, so the vocals are bad, the guitars are sloppy, and it’s a piss-poor recording. For some reason though, my wife really liked it. It’s unusual enough that she likes anything in that style, let alone a grainy live recording, so I tried to discover exactly what it was for her benefit. Whenever she does like something like that, I try to be as diligent as possible in accommodating her.

To that end, I emailed the Minibosses, asking them about it. To my pleasant surprise, they got back to me, letting me know that it was a cover of a Failure song. Now that I knew the band I thought I’d have better luck finding it. That was not at all the case; searching for Failure was pretty futile. It was almost as though they didn’t exist. In fact, what I did discover was that they did exist, but were now defunct, with almost no trace of them on the internet (at the time). I did find a few sites that mentioned them, and some bad samples of Golden that sounded just as bad as the Minibosses cover version (possibly thanks to the inferior WMA CODEC). So again, I’d given up.

Then one day, I got a mailer from Grant Henry, a.k.a. Stemage, the fellow responsible for the MetroidMetal project (of which I am a fan and sponsor). This mailer had information pertaining to a tribute project that he was working on to none other than Failure. Looking it up this time revealed a lot more information. It seems that the internet caught wind of them, and word-of-mouth had increased their fanbase a lot. They now had a detailed Wiki page, and a huge underground following. I found that a collection of their b-sides, demos, and rarities was even available for free download. Paydirt!

I got a chance to listen to this collection (a while ago) and I can confirm many of the things I’d read about them. I didn’t think that anyone made music like that anymore; they continued the evolution of great underground acts from the late 80’s and early 90’s (minus the mainstreaming). The best way I can think of to describe it, is that they sound like a “retro” indie-garage-rock act, the likes of which could have come from the Pacific Northwest scene circa 199x, and yet, at the same time, sounding like they come from 1,000 years in the future. The sound is very atmospheric, concentrating on creating texture and mood rather than on technical displays (though it’s evident in some tracks that they’re still capable of excellent musicianship). Long story short, they blew me away.

Posted by Ron as Music at 1:16 PM UTC

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When I was young, and first exposed to the marvel of Much Music, I began keeping a list. This list contained the band and sometimes album or song name of things I’d heard that I wanted to check out in greater detail. It grew and grew over the several years I’d kept it, and while I’d never made an exact count, I estimated that it may have contained as many as 2,000 entries.

Sadly, at some point, the battered blue spiral-bound over-sized notepad which contained this list became lost in time and space, possibly as the result of cleaning my room, or perhaps when I moved back upstairs from my windowless room in the basement. I don’t know exactly when it was lost, just that the next time I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was pretty distraught over it, as it took me a long time to compile and at the time, could not easily be re-researched and compiled. I wrote the stuff down precisely for that reason.

It was probably just as well. I vividly recall crying myself to sleep one night after having made the realisation that I would probably never have the resources in time and money to follow through with my research. After all, at $20 per CD, just to sample the most acclaimed album from each band would have cost in excess of $40,000. Even if I were hunting through pawn shops, that still represented more money than I could ever commit to such a project. That list didn’t include movies either, and when you factor in that many of the groups on the list probably had more than one release worth buying, the cost grows rather quickly. The list was still growing at that time as well. The conclusion I was left with was that I would be constantly playing catch-up.

Then the internet happened. Napster. It was a dream come true. I downloaded a lot of stuff. I started keeping track again (though mostly just on scraps of paper). It was like a second shot at the dream, until the service was shut down by the lawsuits of a few wealthy artists whining about how they were missing out on revenue desperately needed to fund drug habits, psychiatrists, and whores.

Still, the genie was released from the bottle, and has to date proven impossible to put back. Things aren’t as easy as they were then, but looking this stuff up is still fairly trivial, as is keeping a list on my computer. It doesn’t have 2,000 entries or whatever, but factoring in all the bookmarks and everything, might be getting there. Wikipedia helps a lot too.

And that’s one of the many things I’ve been using to occupy my time whilst I’ve been  away from work. I’ve also taken the time to rip many of my old CDs to MP3. I hadn’t realised how many of them were not on my computer until recently. I think that was a result of being storage-limited before. Now I have more space than I know what to do with.

Posted by Ron as Computers, Music at 6:58 PM UTC

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My sister just pointed me to an amzing discovery, after years of searching, mostly in vain. Mystery Machine still exist. For a long time they were one of my favourite bands, and Canadian to boot. My friend and bandmate Derek taped one of their videos on Much Music’s City Limits program (you know, the one that came on at 1 in the morning, where they aired all the noisy feedback guitar bands not suitable for regular rotation). That had to be sometime around winter 1993-1994.

I had a copy of their first record, Glazed, on cassette, and I played it to death. Unfortunately, everything they put out after that wasn’t quite as good in my opinion, but they’re still better than pretty much any radio-friendly band in the genre out there today. I guess that’s part of the problem; they got more radio friendly, and also, there aren’t many other bands in that genre, and certainly very few that get airplay.

Rock on!!!

Posted by Ron as Music at 12:13 PM UTC

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So today is the Vernal Equinox. The weather was not encouraging today; dismal and headache-inducing. But maybe with the spring weather will come some welcome change.

I’ve been back in Sault Ste. Marie for almost 3 full months now, and I have yet to find a job. Somehow I thought it would be different this time. I returned full of confidence, with new skills, a better attitude, and more experience. I guess I should have known better. Last time I lived here, it took me 6 full years of looking (to be fair, it was on-and-off looking) to find something, and that something started at minimum wage.

Sure, there are jobs out there, but everyone around here wants one of two things; they either want someone who will work for next-to-nothing, or someone with 5+ years experience and fully trained. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium. Call it the “Soo Factor” for lack of a better term. That’s kind of catchy. I think I’ll go with it.

Mind you, it comes off as an excuse, which I suppose it is, but after a search as demoralising as this one has been thus far, I have to tell myself something in order to keep looking.

Since I’ve not been working, I’ve had plenty of spare time, ok, too much spare time. I started that CoC campaign that I mentioned in the last post. First session seemed to go over pretty well. We’ll see how that develops. I’ve also been dumping a lot of time into the D&D campaign that Meghan has been running. It just keeps getting better all the time; defintely a weekly highlight for me. I never realised how much I’d missed gaming until I went without for a year and a half.
Let’s see, what else?

I’ve found out about at least 3 more retarded internet fads this year. The Terrible Secret of Space was pretty amusing; by the same fellow responsible for the silly Zero Wing remix that made the rounds a while ago, and almost as funny. Almost.

Also been linked to a euro DJ putting out CDs under the name Basshunter. Now, I’m not a huge fan of techno usually, especially clubbin’ shit, but this is pretty catchy, pop-y stuff. It’s cute. And from what I’ve heard so far, all of it very nerdy. I guess that’s what makes it endearing. That, and the fact that it’s in Swedish, so I can’t understand how crappy the lyrics are. So far, I’ve heard two tracks, the first one, ‘Boten Anna,’ about a mIRC chat bot called Anna, whom it is discovered, is a real person. The other was about playing in a Warcraft 3 clan on a map called Defense of the Ancients, or DotA for short. Not phenominal, and so campy it hurts, but it was good for a chuckle.

Then there’s the Decemberists. I’ve heard a lot about them in the past year or so, but I never got around to checking them out, until yesterday when Robin Ward posted a link to one of their songs. I figured they’d be overblown, and that was pretty much bang-on. Nothing impressive or special about them, IMHO.

I realise that opinion lacks credibility, because, yeah, I am a nobody, but also because of its juxtaposition immediately following what was essentially a positive review of some cheesy eurotechno. So be it, I guess. I’ll follow it with something equally damaging.

A Shoggoth on the Roof; a musical pardoy of Fiddler on the Roof, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. It’s funny; that’s really all there is to say about it. I’m not otherwise inclined to watch/listen to musicals, but if someone put this on, I’d go. Someone actually tried to, apparently, but were sued into submission. The suit wouldn’t hold up, since parody is clearly fair use, but the company putting it on didn’t have the cash to fight back, so the world loses. Score another one for the tyranny.

What else is there? I guess a hundred little things, but none of them terribly important.

My car is still busted, and Meghan’s is falling apart. The old Dodge is still kicking, but it needs a lot of work before it’s trustworthy again, and I don’t feel like spending the money on it. It needs a new waterpump, which requires taking half the engine apart to get at. It’s a dumb design from that standpoint. I’d contemplated that if the pump ever went critical, I’d just do an engine swap, but at this point, it isn’t even worth it. It’s got some nasty rust starting on one of the rocker panels, and we honestly don’t need three cars. It’s ridiculous, really.

If anything, I want to get rid of two of them and get something newer and more reliable. I’ll keep my Alice, because it would be stupid to sell her after just spending almost $8k on a tranny swap; I’d never recover the investment. Besides, I still like that car, and it’s in decent enough shape. Still needs a new gearbox o-ring and now something is leaking coolant again. I think it might be coming from the lower rad hose, and also from the cap. I guess I’ll try replacing both and see if that helps. Still waiting on new suspension parts, too. I’m trying to time it so that I can have all the major stuff done at once, by Planet Motorsport in Guelph. We’ll see, I guess.

Wow, this post ent up being longer than I expected. I’ll try to post more often. I have no excuse besides laziness, and though valid as any other, it doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

I think the length of this post comes from a growing sense of disconnection from society and a build up of feelings of isolation. Seems odd, since I live with my fiancée and two of my good friends, but there you have it.

Whenever I start feeling like this, I always instinctively reach into my past. I try googling people I knew and find myself wishing that more of them were present and accounted for on the web. I’ve discussed this with Luke before, and he thinks it’s a bit foolish. I can see his reasoning. If they never bothered to keep in touch, then they weren’t good friends in the firstplace. It makes some amount of sense, but at the same time, if that were a universal truth, there wouldn’t be places like classmates and other crap like that. I’ve no intention of falling into that trap, but still.

Maybe this all started again when I called my old friend Trevor, after he called my parents house and left a drunken message on New Years’ Eve. I called him and we made plans; he was coming to the Soo from North Bay and we were going to go for coffee or something, but he never showed and he never called. I know there could be a million reasons for it, considering the nature of his visit here, but still, he could have called. So this is where I’m supposed to just say, “fuck you, I don’t care” or something, right?

I can’t do it though. It’s not like I’d even look for anything meaningful; I just want to know what people are up to. Everyone should keep a blog. Okay, that’s clearly not going to happen, and probably for the best. All it would likely do is make me feel worse about myself. I do, in fact, realise how pitiful that sounds.

Well, before this starts sounding like my young emo cousin’s webpage, I’d better quit writing. Out.

Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can, Games, Miscellaneous, Music, Work at 8:05 PM UTC

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I write this in case anyone actually wants to hear about it, even though there won’t be much to it

I haven’t been up to much. Unemployment can be pretty dull, though I admit, I really needed a break. My last job was pretty brutal on me, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. I should have blogged the whole thing, as my ‘mentor’ was pretty rotten towards me in the end, and it would have been interesting to track how he grew to be that way. But, I didn’t, so you get the abbreviated version, above.

I’m probably going to go back to my old job, though there is always the possibility that we will be moving again, so who knows. Crap like this is why I’m glad I keep a rainy day fund. You can’t always rely on EI, as in this case, I’ve been fired rather than laid off, so I can’t claim. Actually, half the time when I could, I didn’t bother (like last year).

So, in my boredom, I’ve been playing lots and lots of video games to pass the time. Finally got around to beating Front Mission 4, then promptly started “New Game+” and got about as far as I had before I stopped last time. I’m anxiously awaiting news of the North American localisation of FM5, though not holding my breath.

I also played through a few hacked SNES ROMs; a superb Japanese Super Metroid hack called ‘Legacy’ which completely changes the game map, basically making it a new game entirely. Took 11 hours for me to get through it. I played a few other Super Metroid hacks, but one was a poorly thought out rearranging of the power ups, and the other was an annoyingly hard challenge hack (though it was otherwise well done).

The other major hack I played is a complete redesign of Super Mario World, called Super Demo World, which is essentially a showcase for the capabilities of the author’s own world-editing tool for the game. And when I say complete redesign, I mean it’s almost unrecognisable, just the game engine remains. New worlds, new map, new levels, new items, everything. Oh, and it’s also 12 times larger. Before patching the ROM, you have to expand it from 4 Megabit to 48. Amazing, but also very hard.
Then I went on to play a good chunk of the way through a translation patch for Dragon Quest V, which was never formally released here. Great game so far (I’m about halfway through), much better than DQVII, even though the graphics are a little sub-par for a SNES game. When finished I am also going to have a go at DQVI, which is also supposedly translated to the point of being completely playable, and understandable, in English, as well as being much nicer-looking (think Final Fantasy VI). Of course, all that is doing, is making me want to go buy DQVIII, which is only about 40$ brand new everywhere now.

In the meantime, my sister also bought ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds’ for the Gamecube for 10$ from a clearance bin at the Superstore. Surprisingly good game. It’s a 3rd person 3D beat-em-up style game, which although somewhat held back by the GC graphics capability, still manages to be a lot of fun to play. Most franchise games like that are dreadful, but this one isn’t. Maybe it’s because I like the show. It doesn’t hurt that most of the voice acting is done by the actors from the series, the only exceptions being Willow/Allison Hannigan and Buffy/Sarah Michelle Gellar, though the person that voices Buffy in the game sounds just like her. Can’t say the same for Willow, but even if she doesn’t sound exactly like her, she still talks the same. A for effort.

I’ve also started back into Warcraft III, and polished off another dozen missions or so. It’s a pretty good game, and I particularly enjoy that it has a difficulty setting, making it accessible to casual RTS players, like me, while still providing some challenge to genre veterans. I’m playing it because it’s a good game, not because of any love for the RTS format; I much prefer turn-based strategy.

Also played the demo for Return to Castle Wolfenstein out of sheer boredom. The first level where you actually escape from the castle was awesome. The second level where you must escape the catacombs beneath the castle was stupid. Skeletons and Zombies and Flame Demons, oh my! What a pile of crap. That’s been done before in other games, and done better, in my opinion. Thief: The Dark Project comes immediately to mind. Though the fact that these undead warriors can deflect your bullets back at you with their shields is kind of neat.

I haven’t been just playing games. I watched some movies, too. Last night’s selection was 50 First Dates, which I thought was cute. Odd for me, since I usually find romantic comedies to be vomit-inducing. On that note, I also watched Wedding Crashers recently, and that was pretty hilarious. Also caught Starsky and Hutch, which I thought was mostly lame, though it had its moments.

Two of the movies I recently watched were very similar, which is interesting in that one of them is a huge success and the other, not so much. The two in question are National Treasure and the Da Vinci Code. The plot and pacing of these two movies are very similar. Both were decent enough movies, but the only reason the latter did so much better is because of the hype, though I will admit that there was good enough reason for it; the Da Vinci Code novel is much better than the movie (though I still found it to be contrived, predictable, and factually inaccurate at times, despite claims to the contrary). To the credit of the former, however, I actually much prefer Nicholas Cage to Tom Hanks.

Last, but certainly not least, I watched Grandma’s Boy, which, if you’re a nerd, and you like video games, this ’stoner movie’ may just be one of the funniest things you’ll ever see. So stupid, so funny. Though it is shameless. I will not let my parents watch it. It also features a really, really cool Aphex Twin song called Windowlicker.

So other than that, I’ve just been doing a lot of reading. Luke sent me a nice torrent of a bunch of out-of-print Palladium RPG books for TMNT and Robotech, so that has taken much of my time this weekend.

Oh, and my car got broken into again. This time it was in the parking garage of my apartment building. I don’t even know when it happened; it had been sitting for about two weeks when I discovered the damage. Same car as last time, the Dodge Stratus. Chrysler products are a car thief’s wet dream, though both times the GTA gangsta-wannabe failed. In retribution, they stole the chromed valve stem caps from my tires. It cost 3$ to replace them from Canadian Tire. Talk about pathetic. Oh and they also left their nasty gangsta-approved nike athletic t-shirt, complete with stinky gangsta cologne smell mixed with sweat on the seat. Now the whole car smells like that. Good thing the body shop at Oxford Dodge shampoos the interior when they’re done. In any case, I think I’ll get rid of it for real this time.

Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can, Games, Media, Miscellaneous, Music, TV & Movies, Work at 12:20 PM UTC

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I was going to write about a really nifty festival that happens yearly here in London, in Victoria Park, called Sunfest. I had taken a bunch of digital pics, and that was to be the focus of the entry. Sadly, none of them turned out to my satisfaction. I didn’t actually post due to sheer laziness.

In any case, the festival was mostly enjoyable. Too many people; the crowd was so thick you practically had to shove your way through the park. Despite that, it was pretty neat. It went all weekend long and features music and food from around the sunnier parts of the world.

Among the more enjoyable acts, a drum group from Korea called Jeng Yi, and my personal favourite of the weekend, Niyaz. I liked Niyaz so much that I bought their CD. If you like the arabian sound, I definitely recommend you check them out. Though they are much better in person.

Anyway, no pictures, but a finished post at last.

Oh, and I got to try curried goat. Pretty tasty!

Posted by Ron as Food, Music at 10:23 AM UTC

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If you have to be a consumer, might as well do your part and make your opinion about products known. Companies actually pay marketing firms for this information. To entice people to participate, they even offer perks every once in a while.

Meghan often participates in these surveys, not out of the hope of a reward, but rather for the first reason I mentioned, however, perks don’t hurt either. She recently participated in one such survey on hotspex.com, one of the usual sites she receives invitiations from. They have a points program which you can redeem for contest entry ballots, savings coupons, or donate to charity. To encourage you to complete the surveys, particularly the longer ones, they feature a Wheel-of-Fortune-style wheel, rendered in flash, in which you can win stuff. Usually, it’s just bonus points, but they also have an iPod up for grabs.

Meghan hit the jackpot last week; she won the iPod. It’s a 1GB iPod nano, with her name engraved on the back, though they misspelled it. Neat to win, but we never would have bought one otherwise, for several reasons. Firstly, they’re overpriced. Secondly, I have precisely zero interest in itunes. Thirdly, they’ve become disgustingly trendy. Almost as bad as big sunglasses.

So in keeping with the ‘iTunes sucks’ mentality, we looked for options with this thing. The first thing I could think of was eBay, but with an engraving on the back, resale would be much less than retail value. That’s when we found out that you can load non-Apple firmware on these puppies, which unlock their true potential. No more DRM bullshit, no more being locked into using iTunes, no more format restrictions.
We found a couple different firmwares to try, the first of which was iPodlinux. As expected, installation was a little kludgey, but we made it through. We had to disable apple’s annoying utility that blocks non-itunes transfers to the device, but once done, you’re free to make a new ext2 partition and install away. So we got that in there, only to discover that mp3 support (via podzilla), while enabled, was rather primitive. You can do lots of other things with it, and has great skinning support out of the box (the Amiga themes are particularly nice), but primarily, I still wanted to use it as a music player for my 1-hour-each-way commute to and from work every day.

By suggestion from somewhere on the ipodlinux.org website, we decided to try Rockbox instead. A quote from the Rockbox website really says it best. While not as easily made pretty as iPodLinux, its music player works far better, and is easier to transfer songs to.

So, now we have 3 different firmwares to choose from on boot, and 768MB left to store music and other files, which is plenty for my immediate purposes. Did I mention that it plays Doom?

Posted by Ron as Computers, Music at 7:48 PM UTC

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Just took in a Nine Inch Nails show at the John Labatt Centre. This is the third time I’ve seen them live, though it’s been over 10 years since the last time. They have yet to disappoint me; the light show alone was worth the price of admission. They covered all the ‘classics’ right up to some material from the latest release, though even the old songs weren’t boring, as they often end up sounding like a mild remix when done live.

One interesting thing I’ve heard of but never witnessed until tonight: normally at rock shows, when a band plays a ballad, slower song, rocking anthem, or anything introspective, the crowd will flick their lighters; it’s a ‘thing.’ Well, at a NIN show, as you might expect, a lot of people substituted their cell phones for lighters, so there was this sea of both orange flame, and blue-backlit LCD. First time I’d heard of that was from a live recording of the video game cover band, the Minibosses, at MAGfest. Definitely not something I saw at the NIN shows of last decade, though it is fitting.

Anyway, that’s it for me; sleepy time, work tomorrow.

Posted by Ron as Music at 11:48 PM UTC

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